Sellouts

​the enemy within

In political movements a "sellout" is a person or group claiming to adhere to one ideology, only to follow these claims up with actions contradicting them, such as a revolutionary group claiming to fight for a particular cause, but failing to continue this upon obtaining power.

sep 6, 2019

They lack ideas, courage, and competence so they find happiness riding a fence while not pissing off society's oppressors. The defend the status quo while lying about supporting progress. They are the very definition of "kind of pregnant"

cartoons(at the end)

​THE PROGRESSIVE POLICY Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank that grew out of the party’s pro-business wing in the 1980s and ’90s, received $50,000 from Exxon Mobil in 2018 via its parent organization, the Third Way Foundation, according to the oil giant’s 2018 Worldwide Giving Report.

Exxon Mobil did not return The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment. In an email, PPI Executive Director Lindsay Lewis said the money was used for general support and that “we only accept general support funding from corporate interests, we do not do paid for work/research or have any donor run programs.”

Lewis also confirmed that this is the first time Exxon Mobil has donated to the Third Way Foundation.

Though it’s a first, PPI’s new donor isn’t so dramatic a shift from its fundraising record. The Intercept’s Akela Lacy has also found that PhRMA — the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America — has annually donated between $25,000 and $75,000 to the Third Way Foundation since 2009, upping its donation to $265,000 in 2016 — the same year that Medicare for All, which the trade group and PPI both oppose, entered the national spotlight. Donations dipped back to normal levels in 2017, although documents were not yet available for 2018 when the piece was published in late April.

In the last couple years, Exxon has taken up softer messaging on climate than either the Koch brothers or the Mercer family. With business all over the world, Exxon — like every other multinational oil company — is well-accustomed to operating in environments where denying the reality of the climate emergency outright is politically unthinkable. As climate concerns spike around the U.S., the company is still plenty opposed to environmental regulations and the lawsuits being lobbed its way from climate-vulnerable communities and attorneys general, who are each calling into question Exxon’s rule in fueling both the climate crisis and misinformation campaigns about it. Rather than paying people to say that there’s no problem at all, it can rebrand as a good-faith actor in the climate fight with paeans to carbon capture technology, low-carbon fuels (algae!), and carbon taxes that also conveniently exempt it from some of the lawsuits and regulations it’s most worried about. The decades of climate denial Exxon helped fund — and now the Trump administration — have dragged the national debate on climate change so far into the gutter that there are influentials liberals willing to give the company credit simply for not denying the science.

This all dovetails well with a centrist approach to climate politics that’s long sought common ground with industry and harbors both temperamental and ideological opposition to big, confrontational proposals like the Green New Deal. The upshot is that they’ve started to sound a lot alike. Carbon capture, R&D, and carbon pricing — while not mutually exclusive with the Green New Deal framework that the Sunrise Movement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others have begun to flesh out — have reliably been wielded as a cudgel by establishment types against calls for more sweeping action.

Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center, noted that the report indicates the money PPI received was through a “corporate” grant, rather than through the ExxonMobil Foundation. “We have never sussed how these two black boxes of money are managed or dolled out. So if you grab the ExxonMobil Foundation 990s, there are sometimes different descriptions or breakdowns of the funding, but this grant won’t be there,” he wrote in an email. “There is no need for public accounting of such grants. No obligation. But they have seemed compelled to disclosed them through the years.”

Of course, $50,000 is not an enormous amount of money either for PPI or Exxon Mobil. But it may well signal a shift in the fossil fuel industry’s relationship to climate politics.

​For years, Exxon Mobil prolifically funded climate denier groups like the Heartland Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute. Under pressure, the company pledged to stop funding deniers in 2007, although it kept bankrolling politicians who deny the reality of the climate crisis. Exxon also still support right-wing think tanks like the Manhattan Institute, which received $970,200 from Exxon between 2008 and 2018. As recently as 2011, MI Senior Fellow Robert Bryce said “the science is not settled” on climate change. Another MI Senior Fellow, Oren Cass, last year — the year after three of the five most expensive hurricanes to have ever hit the Atlantic — authored a report arguing that the potential costs of climate change are overblown, suggesting that many people prefer warmer temperatures and could adapt easily to global warming. In addition to Exxon, MI is — like other flagrant denier groups — funded by the Mercer Family Foundation; Rebekah Mercer, a key financier of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, runs the foundation and sits on the MI board. Exxon also continues to give large donations the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and remains a member of the American Petroleum Institute, each of which has fought hard against environmental regulations and climate measures. The oil company only left the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council in 2017, four years after it pushed model legislation in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona that described global warming as a “theory.”

Itai Vardi reported at DeSmog this summer that Phil Goldberg, director of PPI’s Center for Civil Justice, has come out swinging against climate lawsuits being brought by cities and states against fossil fuel companies. The law firm at which Goldberg is a partner — Shook, Hardy & Bacon — defended the tobacco industry for decades and was the inspiration for the fictional firm Smoot, Hawking in the 2005 film “Thank You For Smoking.” As a slew of lawsuits has begun to call into question fossil fuel companies’ role in fueling and spreading misinformation about the climate crisis, the industry has stepped into high gear to fight off litigation.

Goldberg is a former lobbyist for the coal company Peabody Energy who was brought on as special counsel by the National Association of Manufacturers in January as part of its Manufacturers Accountability Project, founded in 2017 to take on “activist litigation” against big oil companies; Exxon Mobil is a NAM member, and the MAP project has been among the most active bodies fighting off climate-related legal action. Both Peabody and NAM have also donated generously to climate denial groups over the years. Both, for instance, were members of the now-defunct Global Climate Coalition, which through the 1990s sought to undermine U.N. climate negotiations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Goldberg has also been an adviser for ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force. In addition to the model legislation on global warming, ALEC has vigorously opposed climate and clean energy legislation around the country.

Lewis said that Goldberg works with PPI in a volunteer capacity and is not employed by the Third Way Foundation, despite his lofty title. Evidently, he’s vocally defending fossil fuel companies out of the goodness of his heart.

In March, Goldberg co-authored a report for the industry front group Grow America’s Infrastructure Now on how to bring legal action against anti-pipeline organizers. “Allowing vigilante regulation to go unchecked undermines our democracy. We honor civil protests in this country, but we should not have to accept improper efforts to overturn the rule of law,” Goldberg said in a press release. “People who violate the law by improperly interfering with legitimate business activities, even to advance a political or public policy preference, can be held accountable for their actions through civil litigation.” While not disclosed on the group’s website, GAIN spokesperson Craig Stevens is a partner at the DCI Group, which specializes in astroturf campaigns that have fought everything from anti-smoking laws to climate legislation. From 2005 through 2016, Exxon Mobil was a DCI client. In another detail not mentioned on the GAIN site, the group’s strategic adviser is James “Spider” Marks, who as of 2017 was the advisory board chair of the security firm TigerSwan, which — as The Intercept has documented extensively — engaged in “military-style counterterrorism measures” against anti-pipeline protesters.

Asked whether Goldberg’s positions on climate litigation were also PPI’s, Lewis replied, “PPI, which has long advocated for cap and trade, a carbon tax, and other polices to combat climate change, believes such policies should be made in representative legislatures, not the courts.” In short, yes.

Throughout the 2020 campaign cycle, PPI strategic adviser and Clinton White House insider Paul Bledsoe has commented frequently about the dangers of candidates being too hard on fossil fuels. “[Joe] Biden and other moderate candidates must emphasize that the market is already phasing out coal over time, but that their climate policies still allow a role for natural gas as a low-carbon transition fuel for some time,” he told the Washington Examiner in August. “This distinction is crucial to success in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.” In a New York Times piece about Biden’s critics on the left, Bledsoe said, “Indulging in ideological purity is great until you actually want to solve the problem.”

“Happily,” he wrote in a February Forbes op-ed attacking the Green New Deal, “there is no need to eliminate fossil fuels in the next decade or require only renewable energy or guarantee public sector jobs to meet our climate goals.” We might never find out what Exxon Mobil’s money got up to at PPI last year. If its experts keep sounding like Bledsoe and Goldberg, though, it’ll probably keep coming. ​

Why Is a Freshman Democrat Attacking Progressives in a Washington Post Series?

BY William Rivers Pitt, TruthoutPUBLISHED August 21, 2019

T​he manner in which the establishment press will rally to the cause of conservative Democrats whenever progressive ideas gain traction has been well documented in this space. The sun rose on Tuesday morning to shine down on yet another example of the practice, this time in the guise of a Washington Post puff piece about Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger … except it wasn’t so much a puff piece as a frontal assault on the progressive wing of the House Democratic caucus.

Rep. Spanberger, who defeated Republican Dave Brat in 2018, is one of the cluster of newly elected, “centrist” Democrats Speaker Nancy Pelosi protects and cherishes as her key to holding the majority in 2020. While progressives everywhere were pleased at the prospect of Brat no longer polluting the House chamber, his replacement is suddenly proving to be a muddle of strangeness whose motive for actively participating in a brazen hit piece against fellow Democrats remains opaque.

Spanberger’s record is undeniably left of many of the red-state “Blue Dog” Democrats who came into the 116th Congress with her last November, who prefer the term “moderate” because “conservative” is bad for the brand. She has voted “Yes” on almost every bill put forward by the House during this session, many of which were important pieces of progressive legislation.

More than that, Spanberger has personally co-sponsored legislation to denounce Trump, address climate change, fully fund care for 9/11 rescue workers, enhance background checks for gun purchases, and in defense of transgender members of the military. Her only “No” vote to date was cast against the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, joining progressive “Squad” Reps. Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley in their opposition.

However, some of her “Yes” votes were deeply troubling. Spanberger’s conservative colors were revealed when she co-sponsored legislation condemning activism against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and for Palestinian human rights.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and a number of progressive House members vigorously opposed the bill because it kept open concentration camps housing separated children, and put no restrictions on how Donald Trump could spend the appropriated funds.

For a time, it appeared a progressive version of that border funding legislation might see the light of day, which would have put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his caucus in a challenging spot.

Ultimately, however, the bill was thoroughly bungled by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Senate, and Speaker Pelosi angrily bowed to the inevitable. For AOC and her fellow progressives, it was a stinging act of political cowardice compounded by flagrant ineptitude, and their reaction was both swift and caustic.

Spanberger, it seems, did not enjoy becoming the subject of their ire after that calamity of a bill passed with her help. Nearly two months later, her bitterness has not subsided. “That week,” she is quoted in the article as saying, “showed me that for some people, ideology matters more than putting food in the mouth of a child.”

It gets weirder from there. The Post article obliquely notes how “most people knew” Spanberger was once an undercover CIA operative, skipping the part about how she had to get portions of her Agency record declassified in order to run for Congress. When pressed for details on her CIA career before last year’s midterms, Spanberger had few to offer. “I talk in broad brush terms about what it is that I did,” she told ABC News, “because that’s all I am permitted to do.”

For the record, I was not among the “most” who knew of Spanberger’s CIA past. I did not know that it was her love of languages that compelled her to specifically apply for work at the CIA. I do, however, know the CIA has been actively craving linguistics experts since the inception of the so-called war on terror. One can only imagine where Spanberger’s talents took her in her eight and a half years with the Agency during that torture-riddled affair. One thing is certain: She’s not telling.

Spanberger was more than happy to explain to the Post why her years spent working for “the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service” give her credibility when it comes to voting with Republicans on immigration issues and attacking progressives for failing to do the same.

While an official for the Postal Inspection Service, Spanberger worked primarily on drug and money laundering cases. As the only Spanish speaker during many of the arrests she was involved with, she was “the one dealing with crying children, telling them that we were taking their Daddy away,” she told the Post. “I was the one talking to a crying wife, saying why we were arresting her spouse.”

The Post explains that Spanberger “wanted her [House] colleagues to know she had experience easing children through difficult moments and was trying to act in their best interest.” Apparently, in order to properly contextualize votes that keep concentration camps open and funded, one must be able to think like an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. Thinking like an ICE agent also probably helps when you’re slagging House progressives in the D.C. paper of record.

“Spanberger visited the border with a bipartisan group, a trip that confirmed her position that the situation can improve only by addressing the root of the problem,” reports the Post. “For example, she favors adding more immigration judges to eliminate the backlog of migrants seeking asylum.”

Kudos to her for visiting the border (Speaker Pelosi finally got around to it a bit over a week ago). That being said, one might strenuously argue that addressing “the root of the problem” has more to do with reforming U.S. policy in Central and South America than it does with appointing additional judges to put additional people into detention centers for the crime of fleeing the consequences of U.S. policy.

The article concludes with “almost everyone” applauding Spanberger at a Virginia town hall event after she told the assemblage she was against impeaching Trump. “Congress has the role of asking questions because we should want to get to the bottom of things,” she told a constituent, quoting the Pelosi line on impeachment to the note.

House progressives have shown promising strength and vitality since the 2018 midterms, yet political reality is a subtle thing, and Pelosi’s arithmetic regarding 2020 is not entirely off base. In order to maintain majority control of the House, conservative Democrats from conservative states must be endured to a certain degree. Expecting deep-red districts to elect and then re-elect a bunch of AOC clones is not reasonable at this juncture, and so space must be made for conservative House Democrats to be who and what the voters who put them there want.

This does not explain why Rep. Spanberger chose to be the starring figure in a Washington Post hit piece on progressives regarding immigration, especially after compiling a mostly-progressive voting record that would stand up to scrutiny in many of the bluest districts in the land. Highlighting her CIA and law enforcement past while insinuating that progressives hate feeding children would seem to suggest her voting record is set to take a hard right turn. Bitterness, after all, leaves a lingering aftertaste.

My request to Rep. Spanberger’s press office for comment on her participation in the Post article received no reply, but that’s fine, we’ll be hearing more in the coming months. The last line of the piece reads, “This is part of an occasional series of stories about Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s first year in office.” Clearly, the Post is more than happy to help a Democrat attack House progressives, and Spanberger probably digs the ink she gets by serving as that paper’s willing accomplice. Just another day in politics.

THE KOCHS FUNDED THIRD WAY TO PUSH FREE TRADE TO DEMOCRATS, NEW BOOK SAYS​Ryan Grim, Andrew Perez - The InterceptAugust 13 2019, 3:00 a.m.

​IN THE FALL OF 2007, the tide was beginning to turn against free trade, as the ongoing hollowing out of the American middle class was becoming associated with globalization and the offshoring of jobs. Its leading public opponent was the bombastic CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, a proto-Trump whose economic nationalism curdled easily into racism and nativism. Many Democrats, too, were turning sour on free trade. Then-President George W. Bush relied on Republican votes to ram through the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2005, but future deals were looking far from certain, particularly after Democrats seized control of Congress in the 2006 midterms.

This was a direct threat to Koch Industries, the sprawling business empire long led by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. The fossil-fuel giant’s business has long been based on importing oil from Canadian tar sands, which it refines at its massive Pine Bend plant in Minnesota — and the opposition to free trade threatened to make that business much more costly. The Kochs desperately needed help with Democrats, so they turned to a reliable partner: Third Way.

According to the new book “Kochland,” written by investigative reporter Christopher Leonard, Koch Industries secretly financed a report by Third Way, a corporate-funded think tank with ties to the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. The report, titled “Why Lou Dobbs is Winning” and published in November 2007, was written to promote the free trade agenda to liberals. The white paper explained it would be the first salvo in a yearlong effort to reshape the messaging around trade policy, warning that “a new and powerful populist strain has emerged on both the left and the right of American politics that threatens to turn the nation fearful and inward.”

​Third Way and Koch Industries did not respond to requests for comment.

While Third Way’s report did not note any funding from Koch Industries or any related companies or organizations, it did offer thanks to Rob Hall, then a lobbyist for Koch Industries’ Invista division, “for his support in helping us conceive of and design Third Way’s trade project,” adding credence to Leonard’s claim that the Kochs were behind the effort. Hall was previously a Koch executive. The report also added: “The authors offer their sincerest thanks to Third Way’s Board of Trustees for their continuing intellectual support of Third Way and in particular for providing several of the key initial insights on which this paper is built.” Third Way’s board of trustees is a who’s who of Wall Street and corporate elites.

It may seem odd to see the Koch brothers, who operate today as partisan Republicans, aligning with business-friendly Democrats, but the strategy dates back further. A 2001 American Prospect investigation noted that Koch Industries was a member of the executive council of the Democratic Leadership Council, founded in 1985 by centrist Democrats to combat the left inside the party. Hall, thanked in the report, was a member of the DLC’s event committee at the time.

The paper argues that “neopopulists” like Dobbs were on the rise because Americans didn’t have faith in arguments made by free traders. Polls showed that people believed that “open trade,” as Third Way dubbed it, cost jobs, only benefited major corporations, made the U.S. weaker globally, and that trade barriers and tariffs were good policies that protected jobs. The argument on behalf of free trade, the report said, hadn’t taken into account the struggles of the middle class. “Our policies” — in favor of free trade — “do nothing to restore middle-class confidence in the future,” the report noted correctly. “Middle-class economic anxiety is widespread and legitimate. And fairly or not, much of the blame for this anxiety is landing squarely on trade.”

Of course, as Leonard notes in his book, there is good reason for public skepticism about free trade deals. “Such trade policies were under attack in 2007 because they did not deliver the economic benefits that they had promised to huge swaths of the American population,” he writes. “The textile industry of South Carolina, for example, was decimated by trade agreements, such as NAFTA,” the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Third Way report was rolled out in coordination with then-Rep. Joe Crowley, a Democrat representing the Bronx and Queens, and then-Rep. Melissa Bean of Chicago. Both were leading figures in the party’s pro-business wing. “We all have to begin to speak differently about trade, how it benefits the economy and foreign policy, how it helps Americans and people abroad,” Crowley said in a 2007 Politico article.

The report, which was part of a broader push by Third Way and others to sell free trade policies to Democratic politicians, laid out a series of prescriptions to reframe the debate, and not a moment too soon. The global economic crisis that struck in 2008, which was met with austerity policies around the world, took whatever fuel there was behind the populist movement and lit it on fire.

The Obama administration embraced free trade, making the enactment of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership a cornerstone of its global trade policy that was widely opposed on the left and right. Donald Trump made opposition to free trade a central component of his campaign and rode to the White House over the objections of the Koch brothers. He immediately pulled out of the TPP negotiations and has made opposition to free trade a central component of his presidency. The leading progressive Democratic candidates for president, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both opposed the free trade agreement.

After losing a primary to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Crowley is now employed by a lobbying firm and working to pass Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA. Bean recently left JPMorgan Chase to become CEO of Mesirow Wealth Advisors.​Third Way has consistently warned against the rise of populism on the left. In 2013, the group attacked Warren, warning she would take the party off a “populist cliff.” Third Way now claims to have come to terms with Warren and contends there’s a greater threat from Sanders’ brand of democratic socialism.

Find the Common Ground They Say, Heh...

​Soph0571 - demo underground

go to hell, moderates!!!

Maxine Waters Puts Corporate Democrats to Shame

Julia Conley / Common Dreams - Truthdig​8/9/19

​Rep. Maxine Waters won praise Friday from critics of the cash-for-access U.S. political system amid reports that some Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee are frustrated at her refusal to raise money from the industry she regulates.

Politicoreported that Democrats on the committee have been disappointed with Waters’s decision to focus on consumer protection legislation and Wall Street oversight—the stated purpose of the panel—rather than raising money at fundraisers and through direct contributions from wealthy banks and then doling out that cash to her fellow lawmakers.

otarell 'wilding'✔@octarell Because she ‘has focused the committee's agenda on consumer protection and Wall Street oversight’ exactly what she said she would do— Democrats complain Waters is slow to spread Wall Street wealth - POLITICO https://apple.news/A92bmUEtVQlez0JluKecrog …

At least one critic on social media wondered why the news outlet highlighted the Democrats’ displeasure instead of questioning why “Members of Congress [expect] to raise money from those they’re there to regulate.”

Other House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) chairs have spent significant time and energy on raising money for upcoming elections to give their members a better chance of retaining their seats.

Although Waters still accepts corporate PAC money, she argued that working in the interest of voters is primarily what will help representatives to win their elections in 2020—not amassing funds from Wall Street interests who are used to contributing to lawmakers and being treated favorably in Washington in return.

“Waters said her primary focus during the first months of this year has been on organizing the panel and building a record of legislative accomplishments, including those that members can bring home to their districts,” Zachary Warmbrodt reported in Politico.

​Under Waters’s leadership, the HFSC has held hearings on the persistent housing crisis in Michigan, state efforts to oversee student loan service companies, and the abuses of the payday loan industry.

The committee has also recently passed bills to make the federal Bank Secrecy/Anti-Money Laundering framework more transparent and efficient and to provide insurance discounts for first-time home buyers.​“We must never lose sight of why we were elected to office,” Waters told Politico. “We were all elected to office to address the public policy needs of our constituents.”

One social media user expressed hope that other committee leaders in Washington would take the same approach to their powerful positions.

Union leaders rebuke centrist Democrats for claiming Medicare for All would harm workers

August 3, 2019​ By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - Raw Story

​“Medicare for All would put money back into union members’ pockets in the form of wages and other benefits. That’s why major unions representing millions of workers in the U.S. are in this fight.”

Leaders of some of America’s largest labor unions are speaking out against centrist Democratic presidential candidates who, in an effort to undercut Medicare for All, are pitting unionized workers against millions of uninsured Americans.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), and former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) have each argued in recent days that Medicare for All would undo the hard-won collective bargaining gains of unions by replacing employer-sponsored health insurance with a single-payer program.

​“I really resent the 16 million workers who joined together and bargained for better health plans being pitted against millions of Americans struggling to get healthcare coverage.”

—Mary Kay Henry, Service Employees International Union

As Common Dreamsreported last month, the Biden campaign released an ad featuring a retired union worker named Marcy, who said she “earned” her private insurance and wants to keep it.

Ryan and Delaney echoed the message of Biden’s ad during the Democratic presidential debate in Detroit on Wednesday, accusing Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) of throwing union workers under the bus by backing Medicare for All.

“We have all our union friends here tonight,” said Ryan. “This plan that’s being offered by Senator Warren and Senator Sanders will tell those union members who gave away wages in order to get good healthcare that they’re going to lose their healthcare because Washington’s going to come in and tell them they got a better plan.”

HuffPost labor reporter Dave Jamieson said Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Mary Kay Henry seemed “genuinely angered” when asked about the argument that Medicare for All would hurt union workers.

“I think it’s a false choice,” said Henry, “and I really resent the 16 million workers who joined together and bargained for better health plans being pitted against millions of Americans struggling to get healthcare coverage.”

Henry was not alone.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, toldVox that she found Ryan’s argument “offensive.”

“It is real that there is work to do with unions,” Nelson said. “People do love their contractural plans. But not every union contract today has exemplary healthcare.”

While some prominent unions--most recently the International Association of Fire Fighters, which endorsed Biden for president—have expressed opposition to Medicare for All, more than 20 unions representing over 10 million workers have endorsed Jayapal’s Medicare for All legislation, including the American Federation of Teachers, the United Automobile Workers, and the United Mine Workers of America.

hypocrisy, racism, and a wimpy-ass sellout democrat!!!

The real problem wasn’t the racism — it was the Trump taking ‘the Lord’s name in vain’ twice: supporter

July 20, 2019 .​By Bob Brigham - Raw Story

President Donald Trump was widely condemned after supporters at a campaign rally in West Virginia turned his racist “go back” message into a “Send Her Back” chant against one of a woman of color in Congress.

One Trump supporter in West Virginia also criticized the speech, but not for the racist targeting of Rep. Ilhan Omar.

State Senator Paul Hardesty, a Democrat, wrote to the White House to complain about Trump’s use of the word “goddamn.”

“I will start by saying that I am a very conservative Democrat here in the southern West Virginia coalfields. I was a Trump supporter in 2016, and I continue to be a supporter today,” the Democratic Party lawmaker wrote to the Republican president. “I have a real appreciation of your support for the coal industry, and I thank you for that.”

​“I am, however, appalled by the fact that you chose to use the Lord’s name in vain on two separate occasions when you went off the prompter during your speech,” he wrote. “I know in my heart that you are better than that.”

“During the rally Trump first used the phrase ‘goddamn’ in an anecdote he shared with the crowd about a former business rival, who has since told him he’s thriving under the Trump administration, according to the president,” the Daily Mailexplained. “The second use of the term came in reference to the currently terse relations between Iran and the US, where threatened the Middle-Eastern country with military conflict should their perceived provocation continue.”

Hardesty was not the only one to take issue with Trump’s use of the word.

“This is a warning to all who think God will ‘overlook’ the act of blaspheming His name,” the user wrote. “He will not.”

“I (sic) will not matter if you are a street sweeper or the leader of the greatest republic on earth…God will drop you like a stone,” he warned.

DEMOCRAT-BACKED CENTRIST PAC IS SUPPORTING A REPUBLICAN AGAINST A VULNERABLE SWING-DISTRICT INCUMBENT

Ryan Grim, Aída Chávez - The Intercept7/19/19

THE POLITICAL ACTION committee affiliated with a bipartisan caucus on Capitol Hill is spending money to back a Republican challenge to Rep. Katie Hill of California, a freshman Democrat who has been an independent and at times progressive voice in the House, despite serving in a district previously held by the GOP.

Hill is what’s known as a “front-liner” in Democratic caucus politics, because she’ll face a difficult challenge to hold on to her seat in California’s 25th District. Mike Garcia, an Iraq War veteran, launched his campaign in April, and the With Honor PAC jumped in to support him that same month.

House Democratic leadership crafts its entire political and legislative strategy around protecting front-liners like Hill, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently chastised the caucus for criticizing vulnerable front-liners, suggesting they hit her instead.

That makes the support for a Republican challenger from the For Country Caucus, which includes at least 10 Democrats, fairly remarkable, particularly as House incumbents have launched a full-blown counterrevolution against the so-called Squadand the organization that backs them, Justice Democrats, accusing them of undermining the party by targeting incumbents.

Justice Democrats, which became a prominent actor in Democratic politics after helping elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however, has so far not endorsed a single challenger to a front-line Democrat, even as a new centrist caucus backs a Republican against Hill. The caucus is co-chaired by California Democrat Jimmy Panetta, who was first elected in 2016 and is the son of longtime Democratic operative and former Rep. Leon Panetta. The caucus also includes Democratic Reps. Seth Moulton, Mass., Chrissy Houlahan, Pa., Gil Cisneros, Calif., Jason Crow, Colo., Jared Golden, Maine, Conor Lamb, Pa., Elaine Luria, Va., Max Rose, N.Y., and Mikie Sherrill of N.J. None of the caucus members responded to a request for comment.

In 2018 primaries, Crow, Luria, and Cisneros faced progressive primary opponents and won with the weight of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee behind them. They are now linked up with a PAC working in direct opposition to the interests of the DCCC.

The For Country Caucus is an offshoot of the With Honor PAC, and it initially planned to call itself the With Honor Caucus, according to internal emails obtained by The Intercept. Despite the name change, the caucus’s affiliation with With Honor is still widely apparent. The For Country Caucus adopted a pledge identical to one With Honor’s endorsed candidates had agreed to. An affiliated super PAC, called the With Honor Fund, was bankrolled in 2018 by billionaires Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz, and others, and similarly focused on electing veterans to Congress. ​

According to FEC records, Mike Garcia, a Republican challenging Hill, has gotten more than $3,000 in in-kind assistance from the With Honor PAC. That might not sound like much, but the type of assistance is likely much more valuable than that. The help is listed as fundraising consulting, travel costs, strategic consulting, and legal services, suggesting that With Honor PAC is using its links to ultra-wealthy people to assist Garcia with fundraising. A former Naval officer, he raised just over $250,000 in his first quarter on the trail. ​

​The With Honor PAC’s support can also give Garcia the sheen of bipartisan credibility, highly useful in a swing district. Hill won the district by 9 points after more than two decades of Republican control.

“We support veteran candidates across the country – Republicans, Democrats, and independents – who pledge to serve with integrity, civility, and courage. With Honor Fund has not endorsed any candidates for the 2020 cycle,” the PAC said in a statement.

In addition to contributing to For Country Caucus members, With Honor has also given money this cycle to the campaigns of several incumbents, including Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy; the DCCC; EMILY’s List; and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In March, caucus members and the affiliated PACs repeatedly denied the two had anything to do with each other. In an email to The Intercept, the With Honor PAC said they hoped members have the “courage to collaborate across the aisle” and one of the ways they can do that is with a “cross partisan caucus,” adding, “we’re supportive of them doing that, but like I stated, there is no With Honor caucus.”

“The caucus is folks that focus on, among other things, working on policy that promotes public service and just members of the caucus have agreed to a civility pledge to commit to working with integrity, honesty, and drive to find common ground across the aisle. But this is not, this doesn’t have to do with With Honor,” a Panetta spokesperson said at the time. “That’s separate.”

They’re so separate, in fact, that the For Country Caucus is now featured prominently on the With Honor PAC’s website.

​ON THURSDAY, HOUSE Speaker Nancy Pelosi, boxed in by the Senate and centrist Democrats in her caucus, caved to Republicans on an emergency border funding bill. The Senate bill was put on the floor after New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat and co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, told House leaders he had the votes to scuttle a House version that mandated improved conditions for detained migrant children.

“In order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to her colleagues Thursday afternoon. “As we pass the Senate bill, we will do so with a Battle Cry as to how we go forward to protect children in a way that truly honors their dignity and worth.” A spokesperson for Gottheimer didn’t return a request for comment. The caucus had discussed coming out against the House bill at the congressional softball game on Wednesday night, and there was dissent internally, but enough of the so-called Problem Solvers endorsed the strategy to allow it to go forward.“The children come first,” Pelosi added. “At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available. Therefore, we will not engage in the same disrespectful behavior that the Senate did in ignoring our priorities.”

On Wednesday, when asked if House Democrats would take up the Senate version of the legislation, Pelosi said no. Pelosi’s reversal came days after a searing photo, showing the bodies of a migrant father and his young daughter — Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and Angie Valeria — who drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande, sparked international outrage.

Ezra Levin, a co-founder of grassroots advocacy group Indivisible, was among the many progressive leaders to slam Democrats for buckling. Despite contentious back-and-forths between the progressive and centrist wings of the party, the House passed the unamended Senate bill on an overwhelming 305-102 vote, with 95 Democrats voting no.

The House amendment would have taken away money from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and increased protections for children, among other oversight provisions. The Senate passed its version of the $4.6 billion emergency bill on Wednesday 84-8. A vote on the House version of the spending bill was beaten in the Senate 55-37, largely along party lines, with the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders missing the vote. The Senate’s vote meant House Democrats would have had to hold out to pressure the upper chamber to accept its version, while Gottheimer’s move sapped the House’s leverage. “The quote-unquote Problem Solvers Caucus, I think, threw us under the bus and undermined our position to actually be able to negotiate,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.

“Since when did the Problem Solvers Caucus become the Child Abuse Caucus?” asked Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Wouldn’t they want to at least fight against contractors who run deplorable facilities? Kids are the only ones who could lose today.”

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar joined Pocan in slamming the move, saying that a vote for Mitch McConnell’s border bill “is a vote to keep kids in cages and terrorize immigrant communities.”

When asked what Gottheimer’s objection to the House border bill was, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal said it came down to “not giving as much ICE money as the Senate did.” She added that a bigger problem stemmed from the Senate Democrats putting them in a “terrible position” in the first place by voting on a bill that “does nothing to hold a rogue agency accountable for its cruelty,” doesn’t have any provisions to “ensure the money actually goes to the children,” or that “these for-profit agencies are held accountable.” She described herself as a “giant no” on the bill.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus also recommended the House vote against the Senate border spending bill, saying the Republicans “cannot force us to accept this bill, which does not provide necessary guardrails” and allows the Trump administration to “continue denying kids basic, humane care and endangering their lives.”

​New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted that the Senate didn’t even bother negotiating with the House. “We have time,” she said in a tweet. “We can stay in town. We can at LEAST add some amendments to this Senate bill. But to pass it completely unamended with no House input? That seems a bridge too far.”

The House failure led to widespread recriminations. Jayapal, Pocan, the CPC, and the CHC were blamed for urging House Democrats to pull out of negotiations with the Senate earlier this spring; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took heat for agreeing to a weak bill that left children vulnerable to abuse; Pelosi was slammed for caving; and Gottheimer’s Problem Solvers Caucus was widely derided for its unhelpful intervention. “The capitulation by the Problem Solvers and the Blue Dogs gave us no leverage here,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, R-Ariz.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, and DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos voted in favor of the bill, while other members of leadership, including Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, and Assistant Democratic Leader Ben Ray Luján, who is running for Senate in New Mexico, voted against it.

“We need a bill that delivers funds to end the humanitarian crisis,” Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib said on Twitter. “Not funds to continue caging children & deny asylum seekers the help they need. Not funds to continue the harmful policies. If you see the Senate bill as an option, then you don’t believe in basic human rights.”

corporate boot-lickers protecting a system of oppression!!!

Lauren Gambino in CharlestonThe GuardianFri 21 Jun 2019 01.00 EDT

M​oderate Democrats have stepped up their opposition to Bernie Sanders as part of a concerted effort to isolate him from the sprawling field of otherwise “mainstream” and “electable” presidential candidates running for their party’s nomination in 2020.

Last week, Sanders delivered a searing defense of democratic socialism, setting himself apart from the rest of the Democratic party, whose opposition he said he not only anticipated but welcomed.

At a gathering of nearly 250 political moderates convened by the centrist thinktank Third Way in South Carolina this week, some of the party’s most prominent center-left voices took the bait.

“I believe a gay midwestern mayor can beat [Donald] Trump. I believe an African American senator can beat Trump. I believe a western governor, a female senator, a member of Congress, a Latino Texan or a former vice-president can beat Trump,” said Jon Cowan, president of Third Way, hours before Donald Trump formally launched his re-election campaign with a rally in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday.

“But I don’t believe a self-described democratic socialist can win.”

In speeches and on panels over the course of two sticky days in Charleston, moderate lawmakers, strategists and donors inveighed against the Vermont senator’s populist economic vision. The approach elevated a conversation that has largely taken place behind closed doors about how to thwart Sanders, who moderates believe would alienate crucial voting blocs in a general election.

“He has made it his mission to either get the nomination or to remake the party in his image as a democratic socialist,” Cowan told the Guardian. “That is an existential threat to the future of the Democratic party for the next generation.”

Sanders – who maintains his political identity as an independent– has made it clear he intends to run against the Democratic establishment as he seeks the party’s nomination. Third Way’s public criticism of the senator, days before the first presidential primary debates next week, reflects sharp new dividing lines in the battle for control of the party.

​‘Anybody but Bernie’“The cat is out of the bag,” Sanders tweeted on Wednesday, sharing a Politicostory about how Third Way’s leaders are warming to his closest ideological rival, Elizabeth Warren. “The corporate wing of the Democratic party is publicly ‘anybody but Bernie’.”

His campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, said in a statement that the party’s moderate faction had effectively “declared war on Senator Sanders” and denounced Third Way as a “Washington thinktank that takes Wall Street money.”

Sanders and his allies argue that the Democratic party’s turn toward corporatism led to Trump’s rise and that the theory of political electability advanced by Third Way and other centrists is no match for the mood of the electorate in a populist moment. At a party event in California earlier this month, the Democratic hopeful John Hickenlooper was booed by the audience for saying socialism is “not the answer”.

​After more than two years of watching liberals rise, moderates again feel ascendant. Emboldened by the results of the 2018 midterm elections, which saw pragmatic Democrats win in dozens of Republican-held districts to deliver a majority in the House of Representatives, they are increasingly vocal in their disdain for socialism – and Sanders.

But the question of how to constrain Sanders is complicated. In 2016, Trump defeated a wide field of more experienced and more qualified candidates with a populist message that appealed to the right’s anti-establishment anger. In a race with a similarly large field of candidates, Sanders enters with far more advantages than Trump did: the Vermont senator is both experienced and qualified, with a dedicated following, a prodigious small-dollar fundraising operation, a developed economic platform and a populist appeal that surges when he is attacked by the political establishment he ran against to great effect in 2016.

Trump and Republicans continue to hurl the socialism label at the Democrat field. On Tuesday night, Trump warned in a speech formally launching his re-election campaign: “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream.”

​None of Sanders’s 23 competitors have embraced a socialist platform. Warren, who is nipping at his heels in some recent polls, distinguishes herself as a capitalist.

Attitudes toward socialism are shifting in the US. Recent surveys have found that young people and women associate socialism with European countries rather than Soviet Russia. Yet socialism remains broadly unpopular: less than half of American voters say they would vote for a “qualified presidential candidate who is a socialist”, according to a Gallup poll released in May.

‘Who’s better on the economy?’AdvertisementThe mood at the conference vacillated from nervous optimism to nervous pessimism about Democrats’ prospects for beating Trump in 2020.

“If we don’t nominate a self-proclaimed socialist, we’ll probably be OK,” said Jen Psaki, who was White House communications director under Obama. “I hope so.”

But the former North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp, who lost re-election in 2018, warned that Democrats would continue to lose the White House and the US Senate unless the party makes inroads with rural voters.

​“We have stopped talking to the middle of the country,” said Heitkamp, who launched One Country Project that seeks to “re-engage rural America”. “People feel like we’ve abandoned the bread-and-butter issues, and people in rural America feel it more accutely.”

Emphasizing her point, she said that if farmers from her state were asked to name the three biggest problems in rural America, “not one would say: antitrust”.

During the final panel of the day, Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, predicted the 2020 election will be extremely close.

“We could be sitting on election day not knowing who will win,” he said.

‘Get off Twitter’Several speakers urged those in the room to “get off Twitter” and venture into the real world, where far fewer Democrats are engaged in “faculty lounge debates over political ideology”.

“There is a potential that the hyper-hyper-engaged – the extremely online voters that are paying attention right now – might be able to drive the direction of the campaigns,” said Lanae Erickson, a senior vice-president at Third Way.

She presented a poll conducted by the thinktank that found only one in 10 Democratic primary voters tweet regularly. When compared with the wider Democratic electorate, this cohort of “extremely online” Democrats are far less likely to identify as moderate, are more likely to have participated in a protest and support progressives policies such as Medicare for All.

Moderates’ theory on how to win in 2020, as described by one panelist during the conference, is to appeal to the “woke and the still waking”. The best candidate, they argue, is someone who can mobilize a Democratic base that is increasingly young, diverse and liberal, while still appealing to independents, moderate Republicans and working-class voters who could decide the election.

This is not achieved with “warmed-over 1990s centrism”, said Cowan, but neither is it achieved by “1960s Nordic-style socialism”.

​“Voters do not want mushy, bland, empty Democratic centrism,” Cowan said. “But that’s not who this rising generation of swing district winners are.”

On Monday evening, one of those new House members, the South Carolina congressman Joe Cunningham, welcomed the group to his district, which the 37-year-old flipped last year after decades of Republican control.

Cunningham said he did not win his race by promising Medicare for All or by demonizing Republicans. Rather, he said he won by positioning himself as a moderate who was willing to work across the aisle and occasionally buck his own party.

Like a football coach rallying his team before a game, Cunningham said Republicans who run to the right to embrace Trump are “ceding more and more middle ground”.

“There is so much middle ground to gain in 2020,” he shouted. “I say we take it!”

corporate bitches trying to block progress!!!

Centrist Democrats raise concerns over $15 minimum wage push

BY CRISTINA MARCOS AND NIV ELIS - The Hill​06/14/19 06:00 AM EDT

​House Democrats are moving forward with legislation that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, despite concerns from centrist lawmakers about the impact on lower-cost areas.

Democratic leaders say they’re close to clinching the 218 votes needed to pass the bill, which they expect to bring to the floor in July.

All but 29 of the 235 Democratic lawmakers in the House have cosponsored the measure. Many of the holdouts are moderates who are concerned that a significant wage boost in a short period of time could have an unintended effect in more rural settings.

“I am concerned about the fact that $15 is an arbitrary number that means a lot more in certain parts of the country than it does another,” said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who flipped a seat in 2018 that had been held by Republicans for years.

“I believe there are better mechanisms by which we can ensure that by providing incentives to enterprises who take better care of people,” Phillips said, adding that he was on the fence about supporting the bill.

The legislation would raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 within five years and index future increases to median wage growth.

Raising the minimum wage has been a staple of Democratic policy for years. But Congress has only voted twice in the past two decades to increase the minimum wage, and it has been stagnant at its current rate since 2009.

Many Democrats argue that raising the minimum wage is key to helping workers and reducing poverty, while also lowering dependence on government welfare programs.

But other Democrats argue that in a country as economically diverse as the United States, an across-the-board base wage doesn’t make sense.

“The minimum wage in San Francisco should probably be $30 an hour, OK? But the minimum wage in West Virginia or Arkansas is a different story,” said freshman Rep. Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.), whose state recently moved to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2024.

Businesses have also raised concerns about increasing labor costs in places that have a lower cost of living.

“Fifteen dollars in New York City is not the same as $15 in Oklahoma City,” said Shannon Meade, vice president of public policy at the National Restaurant Association, a group that has raised red flags about a provision in the bill to gradually move tipped workers over to the standard minimum wage.

“Raising it too soon or too high will hurt small businesses, force a reduction in hours available to work and potentially put restaurants out of business,” she said.

Van Drew acknowledged that he’s heard from business interests in his state and elsewhere that “don’t love” raising the minimum wage to $15. At the same time, he said establishing a national standard would ensure that states like his aren’t at a disadvantage if a neighboring state — Pennsylvania, in his case — has a lower minimum wage.

“There are folks in my state that feel, 'Well, gee, if we've got to put up with it, we have it already, let's compete on an equal footing and let every state have it,’” Van Drew said.

For now, Van Drew said he is leaning toward voting for the bill but wants to ensure it doesn’t negatively impact the minimum wage policies in New Jersey — concerns he has expressed to leadership.

“So my sense is, not my absolute promise, but my sense is that I would vote for it. I just have to continue to finish that evaluation that we're going through right now,” Van Drew said.

Progressives such as Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, dispute that incremental minimum wage hikes have negative effects on businesses and employment.

“Every time we've raised the minimum wage in Wisconsin, we've had more people enter the job market and businesses have done fine,” he said.

Progressives won over some moderate Democrats with the promise of a Government Accountability Office study to measure the effects of the wage increase on businesses, Pocan said.

A senior Democratic aide said that leadership is discussing with members a number of amendments, including one that would study the impact on small businesses, as they work to clinch 218 votes.

Some Democrats have suggested allowing lower-cost parts of the country to raise the minimum wage more slowly, an approach that would be achieved by a bill Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) introduced in April.

But House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) suggested that establishing a minimum wage on a regional basis wouldn’t be feasible.

“There would be some congressional districts with three minimum wages. Some franchises would have minimum wages in different restaurants,” Scott said. “The more you think about it, the less it works.”

Even if Democrats muster the votes to pass the bill in the House, there is little chance that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would bring it up for a vote.

Democrats such as Phillips argue that if Democrats want their bill signed into law, an alternative approach is needed to win over Republicans.

“I think there's a way to build bridges with Republicans, especially business owners, who recognize that the intersection here is encouraging through incentives and and encouraging employee ownership,” he said.

In the meantime, proponents of raising the minimum wage nationally are focused on getting enough House Democrats on board for the floor vote.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a Progressive Caucus co-chair, said there are some Democrats who aren’t co-sponsors of the bill but have committed to voting for it.​“We believe that we have the votes,” Jayapal said. “We're there, we just need to bring the bill to the floor now.”

Training to be a corporate lackey!!!

​DEMOCRATIC CHIEFS OF STAFF gathered on Thursday for a retreat to hash out strategy for the coming year and orient themselves in Washington. One of the key agenda items: “How to Engage Downtown.”

“Downtown” in Washington is a reference to K Street, where the city’s lobbying industry has set up shop. Downtown is the destination for many a chief of staff in their post-congressional career, and that knowledge — as much or even more than campaign contributions — helps shape legislative strategies.

The annual retreat is hosted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Cheri Bustos, an Illinois Democrat. A spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., referred questions on the retreat to the DCCC, which didn’t immediately respond. The Washington retreat concludes with a happy hour, at which the chiefs can “meet members of the DC Downtown Community.”

The “downtown community,” on the panel on how to engage with lobbyists, is represented at the retreat by Jonathan Smith, an Uber lobbyist and former chief of staff to a House Democrat, as well as Virgil Miller, a lobbyist with Akin Gump, a powerhouse firm in Washington.

There is no agenda item focused on how to engage with the new progressive energy in the party pushing for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, or other sweeping reforms.

The retreat, while part management training, also included political advice of questionable value, sources there said. Fighting President Donald Trump over impeachment or immigration plays into his hands, the chiefs were told, so it’s better to stick to terrain that’s safe for Democrats, such as shoring up the Affordable Care Act and lowering drug prices. Decrying corruption in Washington, they were advised, merely breeds cynicism, which can hurt Democrats.

​ARIZONA SENATE CANDIDATE Mark Kelly will appear later this month at a high-dollar fundraiser in Washington, D.C. hosted by one of the city’s top corporate lobbying firms. The K Street firm represents major fossil fuel companies, including Exxon Mobil and Chevron; Wall Street banks such as JPMorgan Chase; defense industry giant Lockheed Martin; and the lobby group PhRMA.

Instead, those lobbyists will be asked to pay with personal checks, meaning that disclosure records will not reflect any contributions from drug makers, banks, or any other clients associated with the lobbying firm, Capitol Counsel.

​The firm also represents Walmart, the NFL, Comcast, the American Health Care Association, the Health Care Service Corporation, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Edison Electric Institute, the National Business Aviation Association, and the Internet and Television Association.

The fundraiser comes as the old way of doing politics through big-money fundraising is colliding with a new model based on small donors. But the new paradigm has yet to fully take hold, which is leading candidates to try to mold the old approach to fit the new anti-corporate money mood.

Kelly clearly recognizes the salience of political corruption as an issue and criticized corporate influence in politics as part of his launch video, saying that “partisanship and polarization and gerrymandering and corporate money have ruined our politics.”

“This campaign is about the people of Arizona, not corporate PACs and the mess they’ve created in Washington,” Kelly is quoted as saying on his campaign website. “I won’t take a dime of corporate PAC money, and I’ll only answer to Arizonans.”

But the K Street fundraiser is just one link with corporate money that remains intact. Kelly on Monday spoke at the corporate-funded SHARE Technology Exchange expo in Phoenix, which describes itself as “the largest convergence of enterprise IT professionals.” Both Broadcom and IBM — whose executives will speak at the conference later this week — are the event’s top sponsors, alongside Dell EMC, Hitachi, Rocket Software, and others.

Democrats, once close allies with big tech, have begun to view the industry more skeptically, as a handful of firms have increasingly come to dominate the field. It is unusual for a candidate to continue to give paid corporate speeches after the launch of a campaign, as it allows companies to give directly to the individual, rather than support the person’s campaign by going through a Super PAC or the firm’s corporate PAC.

Broadcom has faced international and congressional scrutiny in recent years for a series of merger attempts that alarmed antitrust advocates — one of which President Donald Trump blocked. Bain Capital, the famed private equity firm known for chewing up and spitting out smaller companies, orchestrating tax-evasion schemes, and buying out a for-profit hospital chain, last year bought a majority stake in Rocket Software. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015 brought charges against Japanese conglomerate Hitachi for making improper payments to the African National Congress’s investment company and subsequently securing contracts to construct two power plants. Hitachi paid $19 million to settle the charges.

Kelly’s campaign told The Intercept that his previous speeches were a way to make ends meet in the wake of the assassination attempt on his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords. His campaign spokesperson, Jacob Peters, said Kelly would keep engagements he’d already committed to, but wouldn’t be adding any others. And Peters pointed out that the content of Kelly’s speeches is always pretty much the same: detailing his experiences as an astronaut and his and Giffords’s journey after the 2011 shooting. The campaign said Kelly does not discuss policy or his campaign at the speeches.

Peters told The Intercept that Kelly’s lobbyist-hosted fundraiser “is not a paid speech,” and that the SHARE engagement was a prior commitment.

The Intercept previously reported that Kelly has given paid speeches to the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit, and opioid giant AmerisourceBergen.

The fundraiser, scheduled for March 26 in Washington, D.C., is being co-hosted by Capitol Counsel’s Jenn Fogel-Bublick, Drew Goesl, Josh Kardon, Ethan Pittleman, as well as Andy Rosenberg of Thorn Run Partners.

Fogel-Bublick served as counsel to the Senate Banking Committee and worked with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She was formerly the legislative director at the National Low Income Housing Coalition and former executive vice president of McBee Strategic (now Signal Group). Her clients at Capitol Counsel include the National Low Income Housing Coalition, JPMorgan Chase, Planned Parenthood, and SunTrust Bank.

As a chief of staff for former Arkansas Democratic Rep. Mike Ross, Goesl worked to advance the legislative priorities of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, which Ross chaired. He was also communications director for former Arkansas Democratic Rep. Blanche Lincoln. In his role at Capitol Counsel, he has worked to permanently decrease taxes on capital gains and dividends. He also worked to help pass Congress’s 2017 tax reform bill. He’s represented Merck, Las Vegas Sands, PhRMA, and Comcast, among others.

Kardon, former senior vice president at the Capitol Hill Consulting Group, was previously chief of staff to former California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, served as her legislative director, and advised her on energy and environmental issues. He served as chief of staff to Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, directed subcommittee staff under former Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, and was Oregon chair for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Among the companies he’s represented are Exxon Mobil, Walmart, and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Pittleman was formerly a policy adviser to Oregon Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Blue Dog co-chair, and deputy director of federal affairs for former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber. His current clients include the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the American Health Care Association.

Rosenberg was previously a Hill staffer for the Senate HELP Committee and worked on former Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Kennedy’s personal staff. He co-founded and was a senior adviser to Draft Obama, a grassroots organization that encouraged Barack Obama to run for president, which is now setting its sights on his wife, Michelle. He also consulted for the Democratic National Committee on election law and coordinated the DNC’s 2004 Philadelphia-area Voter Protection Initiative. Rosenberg advised John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign on health care and policy in the Middle East. In 2004, he also ran for Congress in Virginia’s 8th Congressional District. His clients at Thorn Run include GlaxoSmithKline, the Medical Device Manufacturers Association, Novartis AG, and Partnership for Part D Access.

​Kelly will likely face a primary challenge from Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego in the 2020 race for the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Martha McSally. She was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Jon Kyl, who took Sen. John McCain’s place after his death. The race sets up an opportunity for Arizona to be represented by two Democratic senators for the first time in over 60 years.

As progressive candidates across the country demonstrate that they can win, with or without help from establishment Democrats, many have sworn off corporate PAC money and adopted stances to appeal to voters disenchanted with the status quo. But signing a pledge is one thing. Cutting off corporate influence altogether is another, particularly in Kelly’s case.

The state has moved further left in recent years, and Kelly has taken note, campaigning on combating climate change and lowering prescription drug prices, as well as universal health care coverage. Kelly has also made gun control a priority since the assassination attempt on Giffords. And he says he’ll continue that push should he reach the Senate. Gallego has made a name for himself in Congress by advocating for Medicare for All and protection for Dreamers, among other progressive policies. Gallego himself has taken $763,849 in corporate PAC donations over the course of his career. He told The Intercept that his team hadn’t yet discussed whether his campaign would continuing accepting those contributions should he run for Senate.

Senate Democrats Enabled the Biggest Bank Merger Since the 2008 Crash

​BYSam Knight, TruthoutPUBLISHEDMarch 10, 2019

W​hen Senate Democrats teamed up with Republicans last year to pass banking deregulation, they went all in, parroting conservative talking points about running to the rescue of Main Street. More than half of the Democrats who backed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (S.2155) invoked “credit unions and small banks” when explaining their vote.

Less than nine months after it was signed into law, however, the legislation has already paved the way for the largest bank merger since the 2008 financial crisis — the proposed purchase of SunTrust by BB&T. Their integration would create the sixth-largest bank in the country.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of campaign donations last election cycle from those two banks to Senate Democrats went to supporters of “regulatory relief,” according to campaign finance disclosures aggregated by the Center for Responsive Politics.Individuals and entities related to BB&T gave $10,331 to Senate Democrats; 93 percent of that went to supporters of S.2155. SunTrust affiliates gave $39,762 to Senate Democrats, 97.3 percent of which went to backers of the bill. The majority of the money came from the firms’ political action committees, not from employees.

Notable among lawmakers still serving: Senator Manchin received $5,000 tied to SunTrust; Senator Tester got $2,005. Senators Kaine and Warner each received $1,800 and $1,000 respectively. Meanwhile, Senator Jones received $6,755 from BB&T-related entities and individuals; Sentor Manchin received $1,100. Senators Carper and Kaine were each given $1,000 and $555 respectively.

According to lobbying disclosure forms, S.2155 was hugely important to both SunTrust and BB&T. Filings mention the bill as the only piece of legislation that crossed the desk of BB&T’s legislative affairs team in 2018. SunTrust lobbyists mentioned S.2155 in half of their disclosuresfrom last year.

As its boosters claimed, the legislation did change certain rules governing smaller firms, whether or not one considers that a positive attribute of banking legislation. Some relief contained in S.2155, for example, involved exemptions for smaller banks from rules against speculation with federally insured deposits. Other provisions gave smaller banks an out from requirements forcing them to report data collected to combat racial discrimination in mortgage lending.

But S.2155 also relaxed rules on some of the largest depository institutions in the country — by tweaking Dodd-Frank reforms passed in 2010 to head off future meltdowns. One section forces the Federal Reserve to customize rules for banks with more than $100 billion in assets, rather than merely giving the central bank the option to tailor the rules, as had been previously allowed. The law also loosened a set of enhanced regulations on banks with assets between $50 billion and $250 billion — some of the largest institutions in the country.As noted by The Intercept, this gave both SunTrust and BB&T extra resources and wiggle room to focus on hashing out merger plans. Forbessaid the changes would save impacted banks “millions in regulatory compliance costs.” BB&T and SunTrust respectively have about $220 billion and $210 billion in assets.

While S.2155 was making its way through Congress, supporters said that the bill didn’t strip authority from regulators, claiming it merely provided the federal government with more discretion to use its power. Critics like Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) noted that the Trump administration has shown little interest in overseeing the financial sector, and that the statutory changes will invite more neglect, particularly at the Fed, which oversees merger proposals alongside the Justice Department Antitrust Division.

In response to the BB&T-SunTrust merger proposal, Senator Warren released Fed data and analysis showing that the central bank increasingly waves through merger approvals. Between 2006 and 2017, the Fed approved 86.8 percent of all proposed bank acquisitions. By the tail end of that time frame, the approval rate rose to more than 89 percent, reaching above 94 percent after Trump took office. The most recent data show the Fed greenlighting “94.4 percent of mergers in the first half of 2018,” Warren noted.

When Warren brought up the issue during a congressional hearing on February 26, Fed Chair Jerome Powell replied by pointing out that the approval rate doesn’t account for withdrawn applications. But the senator had criticized withdrawals too, noting they suggest that there are inappropriate interactions between the Fed, a neutral government arbiter, and private-sector actors with business before it.“Is this one just going to be another rubber stamp?” she asked Powell, of the BB&T-SunTrust merger. “You’ve already made the decision behind closed doors before the public gets a chance to weigh in?”

Powell denied the charge, saying the Fed will “conduct a very fair, open and transparent process.” He said the central bank has not even received the merger application yet. Warren replied the Fed would likely create “yet another too-big-to-fail bank” after it did receive the paperwork.

When BB&T and SunTrust announced their proposed merger last month, the two firms said it would enable them to invest in technology and collectively save $1.6 billion through “net cost synergies.” One critic described this claim as PR-fluff for “layoffs.” Bartlett Naylor, a financial expert at consumer watchdog Public Citizen, also predicted that the merger would bring more market concentration at a time when half of Americans’ checking accounts are already controlled by four banks (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup).

“If the business case for this merger is premised on expanding market share to raise fees and rates — that harms consumers,” Naylor said. He added that policymakers should take the opportunity “to examine when banks become too big, as this won’t be the last proposed major deal.”

op - ed: “Moderate” Democrats Are Really Conservatives — and They Are Dangerous

​BYWilliam Rivers Pitt, TruthoutPUBLISHEDMarch 5, 2019

If I hear the word “moderate” used one more time to describe Blue Dog House Democrats who keep voting with Republicans, or any other non-Republican who actively supports today’s Republican Party, it is entirely possible I will eat my teeth. The term “Blue Dog” is a metaphor for a dog straining so hard on its leash that it has turned blue from lack of oxygen; the dog is a right-leaning Democrat, and the leash represents its tenuous party affiliation. These people are conservatives — period, end of file — who hide behind the “moderate” label even as they undermine policies Democrats have hewed to for half a century.

They are able to do this, thanks in no small part to the committed care and feeding of big-paper/big-network reporters, editorialists and producers, many of whom haven’t entertained a new idea since Windows 3.1 was the hot new thing. A recent spirited meeting of House Democrats gave these media types yet another chance to strut their fogbound stuff even as they gave cover to their “moderate” friends who, if you believe the mainstream stenographers out there, have it all figured out.

Their fallback tactic is ease: Inaccurate labeling stands in substitution for analysis because it is easier, tropes outmatch facts because they are easier, and lies from “important people” are not simply allowed to stand, but to flourish. Why? Because it is easier.

“House Democrats exploded in recriminations Thursday over moderates bucking the party, with liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threatening to put those voting with Republicans ‘on a list’ for a primary challenge,” reads the opening line of last week’s febrific Washington Post article on the Democrats’ meeting, only the most recent example of the practice.

There are 137 words in the first four paragraphs of that thoroughly frantic report, a bunch of which clearly strive to become lit sticks of dynamite in the next life. Exploded! Moderates bucking the party! Threatening! On a list! Primary challenge! Frustrated! Lashed out! Pressured! Unquestioned media superstar! Upped the ante! Admonishing! Liberal activists! Unseat! On a list, again! Would that I had pearls to clutch.

​“Unquestioned media superstar” takes the biscuit in paragraph three, however. The term refers to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while simultaneously dismissing her intelligence, skills, passion, wit, will and political savvy by turning her into another bit of TV fluff that will only be popular until the next big hot-minute celebrity comes along. She is bigger than that by many long miles, and those who can’t or won’t acknowledge that are setting themselves up for one hell of a surprise.

What was this House Democrats’ meeting about, anyway? Why were Democrats “exploding” over “moderates’” behavior? The meeting centered around the use and misuse of a legislative maneuver called a “motion to recommit.” It allows the minority party to add amendments to a bill just before it is brought to a vote. The rule exists to keep the majority party from wielding unlimited legislative power, and is something each party protects for the day when they find themselves in the minority. Ever since the Democrats took control of the House, Republicans have been using the rule to stick abrasive nonsense amendments to important bills.

“On Wednesday,” reports Paul Blest for Splinter News, “the House passed a major gun control bill that is sure to die in the Senate, but which laid down an important marker of the party’s priorities. Before that, however, a Republican amendment to the bill that would notify ICE when an undocumented person buys a gun was offered up and shockingly passed, due in part to the votes of 26 House Democrats — many of them members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition caucus. This wasn’t a trade for ‘bipartisanship.’ Only eight Republicans voted for the final bill itself. Twenty-six Democrats just gave them a racist amendment for free.”

Speaker Pelosi, who ran the “explosive” meeting, was in high dudgeon and for good reason. In the eight years the GOP held the majority in that chamber, the Democrats were unable to pass a single “motion to recommit” because there were never enough Republican votes to help them do it. Since January, and because of these Blue Dog “moderates,” minority House Republicans have already managed to get two stapled to legislation. “Vote no,” admonished Pelosi, “just vote no, because the fact is, a vote yes is to give leverage to the other side.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t messing around, either. “When activists ask her why she had to vote for a gun safety bill that also further empowers an agency that forcibly injects kids with psychotropic drugs,” saidOcasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent about the meeting described in the Washington Post article, “they’re going to want a list of names and she’s going to give it to them.” At the conclusion of the meeting, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez herself said, “I think it is an extension of Trump’s tactics into the House, and we cannot legitimatize it and we cannot allow for it and we cannot support it.”

While it is gratifying that enough conservative Democrats won in 2018 to alter the balance of power in the House, that altered balance is utterly meaningless if the Republicans are still allowed to call the shots. House Republicans wanted to jam the words “illegal immigrants” into a Democratic gun bill as a means of putting a tack on Speaker Pelosi’s chair, and the Blue Dogs were their willing dupes.

The background checks legislation passed by the House last week was the most important bill on the gun violence crisis passed by that chamber in decades. There has already been a vote on the Green New Deal, and there will be more to come on equally important Democratic priorities. These Blue Dogs need to wise up on a tactical level, or they are going to find out what life is like on the back bench with no committee assignments and a primary opponent who has Ocasio-Cortez on speed dial.

In the meantime, can we please dispense with the notion that these Blue Dog types are “moderates”? If they vote with conservatives, they are conservatives.

Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not part of some far-out faction to be marginalized by the puddle-minded media; they are the moderate Democrats. The clear-sighted policies they espouse — addressing the immediate threats of climate change, gun violence and wildly expensive health care to name but a few — are deeply pragmatic necessities.

Furthermore, these policies are all wildly popular with voters on both sides of the ideological spectrum, and can be paid for with an adjustment of our national priorities. The F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft is expected to cost at least $1.5 trillion before all is said and done. I can think of a few coastal cities which could use that money to stave off the ocean, which is coming, whether we like it or not. It’s either that, or the “conservatives” can try to bail the onrushing tides out of the boulevards with the alms bowls they usually fill with oil and coal dollars. The choice has become that stark.

It is time for the Blue Dogs and their media pals to get with the program and stop hiding behind meaningless labels and discredited tropes. The avalanche has begun, and the pebbles are taking the ride whether they like it or not. If they want to be on the right, they can try being on the right side of history, if there is anyone left to write it.

The Hawaii congresswoman, who’s running as a Democrat for president, sits on a foreign policy advisory council for the Catholic University of America.

By Nick Grube - honolulu civil beat3/1/19

WASHINGTON — Here’s something you might not know about U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: She’s an advisor to a Charles Koch-funded foreign policy think tank based at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

One of the reasons that’s a surprise is because it’s nowhere to be found on her latest financial disclosure form.

Gabbard, who’s running for president in the Democratic primary, is one of a dozen advisors to the center with strong ties to the Charles and David Koch network — which the author calls “The Kochtopus.” ​

The billionaire brothers have used their wealth to reshape American politics by pushing far-right, libertarian policies through the use of campaign donations and dark money.

They also spent millions trying to infuse their ideas into institutions of higher learning, from Catholic University to Florida State and George Mason.

As the article points out, Gabbard’s affiliation with the Koch-funded Center for the Study of Statesmanship might seem odd given her public pronouncements about swearing off donations from political action committees and the need to overturn Citizens United.

But the center’s viewpoint also appears to align with Gabbard’s anti-interventionist viewpoints that revolve around keeping the U.S. out of regime-change wars.

“Gabbard, a military veteran, has often opposed U.S. engagement in overseas conflicts, including in war-torn Syria, so she is not out of place among anti-interventionists,” the article says.

“But for a Democrat — especially a 2016 Bernie Sanders surrogate who has progressive views on campaign finance reform and single-payer health care — to accept a position at a think tank funded by Koch and staffed with several Koch-linked individuals is unusual.”

Gabbard’s congressional spokeswoman Lauren McIlvaine defended her boss’ affiliation with the center in a statement to Sludge. McIlvaine also highlighted the fact that Gabbard is a member of the Hawaii Army National Guard and has served two tours of duty in the Middle East.

​“The mission of CSS is aligned with the work that she has dedicated herself to, which is why she agreed to serve on their Council of Advisors,” McIlvaine said.​But it’s the financial disclosure omission that sticks out.

Gabbard’s financial disclosure from 2017 — which is the most recent one available — shows that the congresswoman held positions within three organizations: The Sanders Institute, the Healthy Hawaii Coalition and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Profile in Courage Award Committee.

The congresswoman was on the advisory council in 2017.

According to the House Committee on Ethics financial disclosure guideline, members must report any positions they held with organizations, including educational institutions, regardless of whether they received compensation. The guidelines, however, do provide an exemption for honorary positions.

Civil Beat asked Gabbard’s office for an explanation as to why the congresswoman didn’t include the position on her 2017 financial disclosure, but did not receive a response.

This wouldn’t be the first time Gabbard has been caught for not filling out her forms correctly.

In January 2017, Gabbard and her husband, Abraham Williams, travelled to Lebanon and Syria as part of what she described as a secret “fact-finding” mission.

While in Syria she met with the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, a dictator who has been accused by both the U.S. and others in the international community of using chemical weapons against his own people.

The congresswoman was harshly rebuked when she returned by both the left and the right for meeting with Assad. She also initially refused to disclose who paid for her visit.

It was later revealed that Gabbard travelled to Syria with Dennis Kucinich, a former congressman from Ohio, and two brothers, Elie and Bassam Khawam, who said they funded the trip even though it was officially sponsored by the nonprofit, AACCESS-Ohio.The Khawams have been described in various news articles as supporters of the Assad regime.

Gabbard did not initially disclose to the House Ethics Committee details of her trip to Syria, and after the controversy became public, amended her official travel disclosures. Amid the backlash, Gabbard also said she would reimburse all the costs of her visit.

Like Gabbard, Kucinich is also a member of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship Council of Advisors.

Over 90% of the anti-Pelosi Democrats have voted with Trump more often than Pelosi

10 of these 11 incumbent Democrats have supported Trump's agenda more frequently than the former House Speaker.​FRANK DALE - thinkprogressNOV 21, 2018, 8:00 AM

There is one obstacle in Pelosi’s way: A much-publicized bid, mounted by a breakaway group of Democrats seeking to end Pelosi’s reign as leader of the House Democrats, a position she has held since 2003. Their effort, however, met a setback on Tuesday when Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), who was at one point put forward as this opposition group’s choice to repeal and replace Pelosi, announced she would be backing Pelosi instead.

​The anti-Pelosi faction has not come up with an alternative to Fudge since the Ohio Congresswoman made her decision.

On Monday, a long-rumored letter of Democratic opposition to Pelosi, who has served in Congress since 1987, was released with the signatures of 16 House Democrats.

​Of those 16, only 11 are currently serving in Congress. The remaining five include three Democrats who were just elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in the recent midterm elections, and two other Democrats hoping to join this freshman class of lawmakers, whose races had not yet been called at the time of this writing.

​Of the 11 who are currently serving, 10 have voted with President Donald Trump more frequently than Pelosi, who was recently rated as one of the most progressive members of the House by Mother Jones.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s congressional Trump tracker, Pelosi has voted with the Republican president 19.3 percent of the time.

Here are how the House Democrats who oppose her stack up.

Rep. Jim Cooper (TN): 38 percent​Cooper represents the 5th congressional district that contains Nashville, a reliably Democratic D+7 area per the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which “measures how each district performs at the presidential level compared to the nation as a whole.”

Despite this, the nine-term congressman has supported Trump’s policies nearly 40 percent of the time, including backing“Kate’s Law” to increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who re-enter the U.S. and a failed push to add a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Rep. Kurt Schrader (OR): 31.5 percent

Schrader represents the 5th congressional district on the state’s central coast, in which voters supported Trump in 2016 after backing President Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008.

The DC Centrist Democrat Spin Cycle

The votes aren’t even done being counted yet, but the classic post-election spin cycle from the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party is already in full gear. Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum are still fighting for their lives in razor-thin margin elections, but you can just feel the excitement about their losses from the Third Way types, whose public pronouncements already assume they have lost.

By Mike Lux - crooks & liars​11/12/18 8:00pm

The votes aren’t even done being counted yet, but the classic post-election spin cycle from the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party is already in full gear. Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum are still fighting for their lives in razor-thin margin elections, but you can just feel the excitement about their losses from the Third Way types, whose public pronouncements already assume they have lost.

I have seen this kind of post-election spin after every election since 1994: if Democrats have a bad year, it’s because we moved too far left. If we have a good year like this one, it’s because of the noble centrists who prevailed -- and they’ll pick over the bones of any progressive Democrat who didn’t win and point with glee saying, “See! See! They got beat!” It is especially galling given that some of these races aren’t even over. (I guess at least it’s better than actively trying to beat progressive Democrats as Third Way has been known to do over the years, like when they attacked Elizabeth Warren as being anti-business when she was in the heat of a tough 2012 Senate race to defeat popular incumbent Scott Brown.)

There’s a couple of articles out where this spin is in overdrive, here, and here. The official line is that the progressive Democrats who won primaries (defined a certain kind of way that fits the spin) didn’t win a single general election race they were involved in and didn’t turn a single Republican district to Democrat.These kinds of spin games have to be put to rest. I think it’s important to make the following points about some of the goofy things in these articles:

1. Not all of the progressives on the Wall Street Dems’ list have lost. Gillum, along with centrist white guy Senator Bill Nelson whose number of votes and margin are almost identical, are in the midst of recounts, in case you hadn’t noticed. Two of the closest elections in Florida history, and Florida has had its share of close ones, as you may recall. Not all of the votes are counted in Georgia either, and the race might go to runoff. Not all the votes have been counted in Katie Porter’s race in California, either. Guys (because most of the people putting out this BS are indeed men), please don’t dance on the graves of these outstanding Democrats until their races are over. Progressives aren’t sitting around rooting for Kyrsten Sinema to lose because she’s a moderate.

2. The list of progressives who won primaries is a lot longer than the nine people the corporate Dems are crowing about who lost, and tons of them are winning. Brilliant progressive Xochitl Torres Small won a very Republican Congressional seat in New Mexico after winning the primary; progressive star Colin Allred won a tough primary and went on to defeat incumbent Pete Sessions in Texas; Antonio Delgado won a very tough primary in NY-19, and went on to win in a very tough rural district against incumbent John Faso; Mike Levin became the Democrat in California’s strange jungle primary system, beating several other strong Democrats and then winning in what had been the Republican House district of Darrell Issa for many years. Katie Hill in California ran on a strong progressive agenda to beat incumbent Steve Knight, winning a tough Southern California district. I’ll stop at five examples, but there are a great many more than the carefully handpicked list from the Third Way types. All of these were candidates helped in the primaries by many different progressive groups and activists. They generated enormous enthusiasm among progressive netroots donors across the country, and ran unapologetically on a strong progressive agenda in their campaigns.

3. Most of the candidates who ran in competitive races, and most who won, supported major elements of the progressive populist economic agenda. You can look it up!: most of the congressional candidates who won Republican seats supported some combination of Medicare For All or a major Medicare expansion, an expansion of Social Security benefits, a $15 minimum wage, doing something big about student debt, major new taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street banks, and/or major new initiatives on climate change. Given that the Third Way's historic agenda is cutting Social Security benefits, opposing Medicare For All, lessening regulations on Wall Street, and instituting a minimum wage much lower than $15, the incoming class of Democrats were not what you'd call a bunch of Third Way types.

4. Anyone who thinks that the typical cautious centrist campaigns of the past would have run some of these races is smoking something far more potent than marijuana. Whoever won the Democratic primary to run against Governor Larry Hogan in Maryland was almost certain to lose, as he was one of the most popular governors in the country. In Arizona, Governor Ducey was always heavily favored. In Texas, no Democrat running statewide had come anywhere near as close as Beto in 24 years, almost all losing by double digits. Florida and Georgia have not had Democratic governors in 20 years. All of those losses by progressives that the centrist Democrats are so delighted to cite (and as noted some are yet to be declared losses) were in very tough races, that most politicos considered longshots from the beginning of the cycle.

I would add that no serious political observer can make the case that duller, more centrist, white candidates could have turned out as many African-American, Latinx, or young voters as Gillum, Beto, or Abrams, who lit a fire in those communities. Democrats are not going to win in tough places like these without an incredibly high turnout of our base.

5. The centrist Democratic strategy didn't do so well in those red states. In red state Senate races where centrist Democrats worked hard to distance themselves from progressives and the party, we had a pretty lousy track record. Manchin pulled it off, but he is a pretty unique figure in modern American politics -- and he sure was unique in this election, as he was the only centrist who survived. Donnelly in Indiana, McCaskill in Missouri, and Bredesen in Tennessee all did worse than their margin-of-error polling average throughout the campaign, losing by 7, 6, and 11 points respectively. By my book, that's a lot. Meanwhile, Heitkamp in North Dakota, to whom I do give a lot of credit for bravely and strongly opposing Kavanaugh and for not giving in to the temptation to join Trump's race baiting as Donnelly and McCaskill did, nevertheless did run as a pretty centrist Democrat. She also lost by double digits, although she had not been close in the polls for a while.

Some will argue that Montana Senator Jon Tester, who won, ran as a more conservative Democrat, but I did not see it that way. Tester finds ways to emphasizes his pragmatism in getting bipartisan bills passed that Trump could sign, but he describes himself as a "Montana Democrat," someone who is proud of being a Democrat, but is tied to the culture and independence of Montana. A long-time friend of his who is from Montana told me that he even has been known to describe himself as a progressive in public from time to time. He didn't play any of the signaling games in culture-war politics that Donnelly and McCaskill did, either.

6. Tammy Baldwin and Sherrod Brown. The two Democrats who won from states that Trump won in 2016 that the Third Way types avoid talking about at all costs are Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Their stories in the 2018 cycle are very inconvenient for the ‘Progressives Can't Win’ narrative. They are two of the most progressive and populist people in the U.S. Senate. Both of them were initially very high on the Republican target lists for this cycle. In fact, Tammy Baldwin had more spent against her in 2017 than any other Senate incumbent. But neither of them moved to the center at all or got the least bit mealy-mouthed in voting and speaking out for progressive issues or values. They both were able to establish strong early leads and won going away.

I want to say a special word about Sherrod Brown, who has been one of my favorite senators for as long as he's been here. One of the aforementioned articles talked dismissively about Brown with his populist message only winning by six. The author made it sound like his message didn't work very well, which has to be the single dumbest thing I've read (outside of Trump quotes) since the election. First of all, a margin of six points is a pretty sizable win in any contested state, especially in a red-state like Ohio. Sherrod is the only Ohio Democrat to win a statewide race since 2006. Trump had close to a double-digit win. This year, there was a criminal justice reform ballot measure that Republicans put a lot of money into attacking that was a big drag on the Democrats running. But Sherrod Brown showed how a progressive populist message focused on working people can still win in red America.

The reason all of this is important to lay out is that the DC centrists are working hard to build the case that a progressive candidate and message cannot win the presidential race in 2020. Let me disabuse you of that misguided notion: our best chance by far is for a presidential candidate that is a strong progressive, willing to take on Wall Street, the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, Big Oil, and other big monopolistic corporations who are dominating our economy and threatening the American dream for working families. Sherrod Brown won in Ohio when no other Democrat could; Beto O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams did better than any other statewide candidates have done in a generation; strong progressives won in dozens of tough districts all over the country, and came close in many more; and Andrew Gillum is a hare's breath away from becoming the first Florida governor in a generation.

Have progressive candidates solved all the challenges of the modern era in terms of winning elections? Of course not. But the formula of genuinely reaching out to working folks of all races and religions, getting young people excited about politics again, and telling the story of how Wall Street and big monopolies need to be tamed again is a formula than is going to win us far more elections than the Third Way agenda of cuddling up to the big banks and cutting Social Security benefits. At the end of the day, what Democrats need to do is to reject the false choices that have plagued our party for the last generation: we don't have to choose between white working class and rural voters and firing up our base; we don't have to choose between advocating for fairness and advocating for economic growth. We win with a message that inspires and motivates Democrats and progressive activists and voters, and appeals to those working class and rural folks in the middle at the same damn time.